Astronomers are borrowing principles applied in biology and archaeology to build a family tree of the stars in the galaxy. By studying chemical signatures found in the stars, they are piecing together these evolutionary trees looking at how the stars formed and how they are connected to each other.
The award winning entries in the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016 competition in the category ‘Stars and Nebulae’. The winners were announced on 15th September at an award ceremony at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
Gaia, the space probe that has been mapping a billion stars in the Galaxy following its launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) in December 2013, has revealed its first revolutionary data.
Numerous stars provide a serene background in this view of Saturn’s moon Enceladus captured by the Cassini spacecraft while the moon was in eclipse, within the ringed planet’s shadow.
Some of the biggest galaxies in the Universe started to shut down their star-formation from the inside-out ten billion years ago, according to new observations made using the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope.
When the primary mission of NASA’s Kepler spacecraft ended in May 2013 due to a failure of its stabilisation system, a team of scientists and engineers developed an ingenious strategy to control the spacecraft. The resulting second mission, K2, has a newfound planet — HIP 116454b
Astronomy Now Online brings you a powerful interactive global Almanac and UK-based all-sky star maps — the first of a new suite of tools to help plan your observing sessions and travel.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has picked up the faint, ghostly glow of stars ejected from ancient galaxies that were gravitationally ripped apart several billion years ago.